This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant provides funding for advancing a new sheet metal forming process, referred to as "hot blank-cold die," which is particularly suited for manufacturing components out of lightweight materials, such as magnesium and aluminium alloys. A coupled thermo-mechanical numerical tool will be developed to simulate the process and capture the non-isothermal material deformation. The numerical tool will incorporate analytical material models that take both anisotropy and changes in the microstructure into account. Uniaxial and biaxial tensile tests will be carried out over a wide range of conditions (temperatures and strain rates), in order to fully characterize material behaviour and calibrate the material models. Overall validation of the numerical tool will be performed by comparing predictions to experimental hot blank-cold die forming runs under various process conditions. The latter will be performed progressively, starting from small-scale lab experiments, to full-scale forming runs of automotive components. Material properties in the formed parts will be evaluated and post-process maps will be constructed, paving the way for future process optimization work.
If successful, the proposed process has the potential to enable the manufacture of these hard-to-form alloys at lower cost and higher throughput than is currently achieved with hot forming operations. The research outcomes could enable product design for these limited-use materials, especially for light weighting of automobiles. The project has educational and outreach components that will foster undergraduate research activities in a graduate-only institution, integrate education and research within a recently-established automotive engineering program, and will enrich educational and outreach activities at the only Children's Museum in the upstate region of South Carolina. The project will also contribute to developing an Educational Television Program that aims at promoting awareness of grand long-term issues (energy conservation, sustainability, etc.), and inspiring the younger generations on how engineering and innovation help tackle such issues.
